Re: Great SWT Program

In article <1191655117.536926.24500@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
<bbound@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 4, 4:56 am, blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I was referring to the people rebooting who don't know about <insert
unobvious* and undocumented** chord here>

Right. And the system is only "relatively idle" in that there's
no one sitting in front of it using it interactively. It's doing
background work, as part of a cluster of machines, and that work
gets disrupted on a reboot. I guess the point I'm trying to make
here is that it's kind of hard to retrain people out of the habits
induced by having grown up with single-user systems. <shrug>

I guess this is an issue that really has little to do with interface
cruftiness, then.

Actually it kind of is -- ideally the screen-locking program would
have an option to log out the current user. Interestingly enough,
there appear to be *two* screen-locking programs that can take
control, and while one of them just asks for a password, the other
has additional options, including (I think) one to switch users.

That these lab machines *can* be rebooted by other than the sysadmin
is ... well, unfortunate, but probably unavoidable if J Randoms have
physical access to the boxes as is apparently the case.

Exactly. There's probably some way to harden things a bit more,
but our basic premise is that our users are trustworthy though not
necessarily 100% clueful.

The "tower" parts of the machines are housed in a sort of bracket
thing that suspends them below a desk/table.

Eeeeuw. Probably not as well vibration-isolated or stable than any
other location -- if anything breaks with the mounting, they drop a
foot or so and probably implode. :P In that position, it's probably
knees rather than feet banking the button. Can you at least turn the
machines sideways, or put a cardboard guard or something over the
power-button area (which won't stop someone purposely rebooting the
machine, but should make it much less likely to reboot from an
accidental knee knocking)?

I guess. One incident in several years, though -- maybe not
something to worry about much. And it *was* a foot being waved
around rather than a knee, according to the "guilty" party.

As for choice of vendor,
well, there are constraints imposed by, hm, "local politics" is
probably the way to say it. <shrug>

In other words, whatever bribes or kickbacks the institution or
municipality has received from vendors? :P

Um .... The ":P" is supposed to tell us that you're not *actually*
suggesting anything negative about my current place of employment
or any of its employees, right? I have no reason to suspect
any of them of being less than honest and competent, and I find
it a bit offensive that you seem to be suggesting otherwise.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.
.